Birthday Surprises- Not for the faint of heart

Last Wednesday was my birthday. Stephen had planned a lot of surprises for me including a new tennis racket, a song he wrote and recorded for me, and dinner with friends. Something else happened though that was even a surprise for him.

We went to Jefferson City to go ice skating. We were having tons of fun skating around but Stephen kept on saying that he thought he needed his skates sharpened. I kept on teasing him by saying that maybe he couldn't skate and stuff like that. About 3 minutes until the end of the free skate, we started messing around. He was pushing me backwards and I was putting my leg up. This was working well until I lost my balance. I recovered, but Stephen had lunged out to catch me and he didn't recover, smacking his head right on the ice. I went over to him and he was very quiet, holding his head. When he lifted his head up I saw that he was bleeding... a lot. I guess he didn't even know that he was bleeding, because the fall hurt, but afterwards it didn't hurt that bad. We skated off of the rink with Stephen bending over the whole time because he didn't want to get blood on his clothes, dripping large drops of blood every few feet. When I saw his wound, I told him "you are going to have to get stitches". Stephen just kept on saying "I am fine". When the ladies who worked at the ice rink were alerted and started helping us clean Stephen up they also agreed that Stephen needed stitches and told him that I "was not exaggerating". So, after awkwardly getting out of our skates and into shoes, we were off for the ER. I dropped Stephen off at the door and parked. When I came in he was joking with the lady at the front desk that the ice skating story was, "the story I told him to tell", and really I had hit him. haha We actually got in to the ER pretty quickly. I was very impatient the whole time, just wanting his head to be put back together, but really we were out of there in 2 hours. Not too bad. He had to have 4 stitches underneath his skin and 20 on top. In case if you didn't catch it, 24 stitches total! I still think of how he kept on telling me at the ice rink that he is fine when I told him he had to have stitches. I wish he would believe his wife sometimes! Anyway, he is healing up fine and isn't too sore from it except his arm from the tetanus shot.

The Wound

All back together

There was a picture of his doctor and his nurse, so we took a photo to share. It is funny because the reflection off of the picture looks like a halo over the doctor's head! haha